Chapter Text
“He’s been what?” Leia asked, surprised. Her hand grasped Han’s tightly.
“Poisoned.”
“With what?” “When?” Han and Leia asked at the same time
“It will take us a little more time to come up with those answers, but we are working on it and will let you know.” The medic left to investigate further.
“Just my luck. I finally decide to settle down and…”
“Don’t you dare give up on me now. You are still my scoundrel and the luckiest man I know. We are going to find a way out of this, just like we always do.”
“I don’t know… this time feels different. We may have to face facts… My luck might have just run out.”
She experienced a fleeting memory of the time he was missing. The feeling took her breath away.
Grabbing him by the shirt, she brought his face right to hers. “You listen to me right now, flyboy. You—We…” she gestured between herself and Han, “are not giving up. We WILL figure this out. Got it?” She was not about to lose him now. Not when they were finally together.
“Got it.”
Leia reached out to hug him. He wrapped his arms around her, but his look said it all. He was worried, but this was a fight that she didn’t plan on losing. Somewhere out there was a solution and they would find it. She laid her head gently on his chest, listening to his heartbeat until he eventually drifted off to sleep.
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Leia went to check in with the medic to see if they had found anything. She met Luke as he entered. He cut her off before she could explain.
“I heard. We need to establish a timeline to see when it happened. Where’s Chewie? We’re going to need him too.”
“With Han.”
Luke tapped his comm. “Chewie, can you come to the medical lounge?” Chewie roared. “I know you don’t want to leave him, but it’s important we need to establish a timeline if we are going to find out when and where this happened.”
Chewie entered the room with a growl. Leia walked over to him and put her hand on his arm.
“I know, I know, but you are with him most of the time when we are not, so we need your help if we are going to solve this.”
She turned to her brother. She needed to be logical about this, but her emotions were running wild.
“It has been weeks since Tatooine… I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Are we sure this ‘poison’ isn’t a result or a side effect of the carbon freezing?” Luke asked.
“We can’t be sure of anything until we get more results, but it wasn’t a side effect that either of us read about. So little is really known about its effects on humans.” Leia put her head in her hands. “We should have tried to get him to a medical facility first before releasing him.”
“Leia, you know that wasn’t a realistic option… to sneak him out that way.”
“It’s not like we were able to sneak him out the other way.” The anger obvious in her voice. Chewbacca put his arm around her. “I just can’t lose him… not now, not when we just got him back.”
Luke gently took one of her hands and looked her in the eyes. “I know, we won’t. We will figure this out.”
Chewbacca roared his agreement.
The trio started making a timeline beginning with their departure from Tatooine.
They had been discussing and laying out the timeline for what felt like an eternity. Her stomach churned with every unknown branch.
“Then there was the time after the bunker incident. He avoided me for several days. It could have easily happened then.”
Chewbacca growled. Although both Luke and Leia understood the basics of Shyriiwook, more complex ideas were sometimes harder to grasp, fortunately the screen automatically translated. <He tried to go back to his old ways, hanging out in bars, playing Sabacc, getting in touch with his smuggler contacts, but it was clear that he didn’t want that life anymore. He mostly worked on the Falcon or… sat around brooding.>
“He wasn’t sleeping, was he?” Leia asked.
Chewbacca shook his head. <He tried, I think, but usually would end up working on the Falcon, or going to the lounge or just… pacing.>
“So there are several opportunities for someone to have slipped something in his drink.”
“But to what purpose…?” Luke asked. “If they wanted him dead there are much easier ways to kill someone in those types of places. No one has come forward asking for a ransom for the antidote. I think that is an unlikely possibility, but I guess we should keep it in mind.”
The medical team had already confirmed that he didn’t have any puncture marks so ingestion did appear to be the likeliest possibility. Leia couldn’t shake the thought that someone could have slipped Han something either at a bar, or in his food. Those days after the bunker when he avoided not only her, but all of them. It could have easily happened during that time.
Unable to handle the images floating through her head, Leia went to check on Han while the others continued to discuss the timeline and findings so far.
He was waking up. Although he was sleeping better when she was with him, he continued to have difficulty sleeping when he was alone. She heard and felt his groan as he came awake. He reached for his side. She hurried to him, concerned.
“It’s getting worse,” Leia said quietly. More of a statement than a question.
He nodded. “Can’t hide anything from you. Not that I want to anymore.”
He looked so exhausted and not from lack of sleep this time. “You have to fight Han, we are making progress, but I need you to fight.”
Leia explained what they’d pieced together so far.
“Ingested it, huh?”
“They believe so.”
“Han…” Luke entered and immediately paused, looking at his sister, worry evident on his face.
“I’m going to borrow Leia for a moment.” He pulled her toward the door. “He looks so much weaker than just a few hours ago.”
“All the more reason we need to figure this out.”
“Yeah…” He gave her arm a squeeze before they both ventured back into Han’s room.
“Hey, Kid. Do you think it could have been Officer Deak that day in the bar?”
“That is a thought.” Luke searched his memory of their encounter. “He certainly was close enough, but he was quite inebriated to pull something like that off.”
“Unless it was a ploy. He was upset with me for going after Graven.”
“I think he is still in the brig. I’ll have him interrogated. Hang in there. We are going to get to the bottom of this.”
Han nodded as Luke left to give the order. Leia took Han’s hand in hers. She could feel his strength leaving him and tried to focus on giving him some of hers. He noticed a small bandage on her hand.
“What’s this?”
“Oh, I cut my hand on a piece of machinery the other day. It keeps opening back up so I had the medic bandage it. It’s nothing.” Han’s eyes widened. “Han, it’s nothing really.”
“IT is something…” She started to shake her head. “Leia… I’m not healing…”
“Oh…” She took a deep breath as the realization hit her.
“Call Luke back.”
Leia hit her comlink. “Luke, come back to the medbay. I think Han just figured out something.”
“And bring the medical team,” Han added.
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The results were in. Even though she’d heard it from the medic, seeing it there in print on the datapad made it real. Three names, three positive results. They'd all been poisoned.
She rubbed her forehead in disbelief but there it was glowing in bold Aurebesh script. A variant of Synox, a colorless, odorless, tasteless poison. Synthetic, slow-acting, rare.
“What does it do?” Leia asked, although she could already see what it was doing to Han.
“Its main purpose is to prevent the body from healing, therefore taking a potentially long time before it becomes noticeable and by then impossible to trace. If General Solo had not had the unfortunate combination of having a slowed metabolism and having been shot it could have remained in your systems for months and even years slowly wasting the body away.”
Whoever had done this wanted it to be a slow death, agonizing. They wanted them all to suffer. Leia contemplated the implications.
“So… when do we… get the… antidote?” Han managed to get out between the waves of pain in his side. Leia brushed a strand of damp hair off his forehead, placing a tender kiss there. His skin burned hotter than usual beneath her touch. She could see him trying to fight off the pain, his eyes clouded with it. His jaw clenched, breathing labored.
“As we said, it is a rare toxin. We do not have an antidote on hand. We must run tests on the antidote for Synox to see if it will have any effect. We will also begin developing an antidote for the toxin.”
“How long will that take?” Leia asked as she sat next to Han running her hand through his hair in an attempt to soothe him.
“There is no basis for a timeline. It could take hours to days to weeks.”
Luke guided the medic away from Han. Leia looked at Han, her worry deepening with Han’s decline. She joined her brother as he spoke with the medic.
“Han doesn’t have weeks, look at him he might not even have days at the rate he is declining.” Leia could hear the tremor in her brother’s voice, his new found Jedi calm was faltering. It wasn’t fear exactly, but he was shaken.
“I assure you Commander Skywalker, we are doing everything we can.”
“I know, I know, but that is my friend in there. He’s like my brother and he’s dying.”
“We will do more.”
“Thank you.”
Leia watched from the doorway as another medic replaced Han’s pain and bacta patches.
Han pulled himself up to a sitting position, exhibiting some relief with the new pain patch. She was drawn back to his side. “Leia… I’m sorry. I was off my game that night. Have been since I got back.”
“Why… because you have only saved my life two times since then… three if you count this.”
“I couldn’t keep you safe on Endor and then I let you get poisoned. I kriffin’ knew something was wrong—but I chalked it up to… echoes of Cloud City.”
“If you recall I had the same feeling, thought the same thing.”
“I felt both of your distress and failed to search further into my feelings,” Luke added to the conversation as he re-entered the room.
Chewbacca followed Luke back into the room. <I failed as well.>
Luke and Leia looked to Han for translation.
“No you didn’t, pal.” He turned back to the twins. “Chewie thinks he let us all down. You’ve paid back that life debt more times than I can count.”
Chewbacca roared in disagreement.
“Yes, all of us.”
“Nobody failed here. Han, you got us out of that city before we got trapped there or worse, taken prisoner. And as strange as this is to say, you getting shot may have saved all of our lives. Chewie, you got to the Falcon and flew us out of there. So I need all of you to stop feeling guilty and put your energy towards something more productive,” Luke said looking at each of them.
They all nodded their agreement.
“Could Chewie and I have a moment?” Han asked.
“Sure, we will just be out here.” Leia threaded her fingers through his for a moment. Even with the pain patch, his breathing was shallow and uneven. She would not lose him to this—not now, after everything. She would tear the galaxy apart looking for a cure first. She kissed him tenderly before going to join Luke in the waiting area.
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The medic came up to them in the waiting area.
“We have a timetable now upon comparing all three of your results. It appears that the ingestion did take place during the time that you designated you were on Basilisk II.”
Luke looked at Leia. “Remember what you told me later that night. That the dinner reminded Han of Cloud City. I think that might have been intentional.”
Leia opened her mouth to protest, but the feelings from that night returned, unsettling, the nagging twist of her gut. Her mouth closed of its own accord. “Think about it. They wanted Han distracted, off balance, you too, probably so that we wouldn’t sense their deception.”
“Whose?” Leia asked, her hands subconsciously tightening into fists. She couldn’t quite make a connection; it was all familiar, but nothing exact. “The Empire??”
“I don’t know, someone who is still connected to the remnants of the Empire. Someone who wants us out of the way.”
And now she had a place to look. She would find that cure. She didn’t hesitate. “I need to call Mon Mothma.”